DOJ Plans Intervention in Trump Supreme Court Carroll Appeal

Author E. Jean Carroll arrives to federal court in New York in 2023. 

Photographer: Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg

The US Justice Department will ask the Supreme Court to let it intervene in President Donald Trump’s appeal of the $83.3 million jury verdict against him in a defamation suit brought by former Elle magazine advice columnist E. Jean Carroll.

The government will ask the high court justices to substitute the US for Trump in the case because the president was acting as a government employee when he denied Carroll’s sexual-assault claims in 2019, Assistant US Attorney General Brett Shumate said in a filing late Tuesday with the federal appeals court in Manhattan.